Spy shoes to drones: How U.S. surveillance changed

Dec. 3, 2013
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Someone is Listening / Kevin A.Kepple

by Jessica Durando and Ashley M. Williams, USATODAY

by Jessica Durando and Ashley M. Williams, USATODAY

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With decades of James Bond movies, The Americans on TV and countless video games and books, spying has embedded itself deep into our popular culture. What's more striking is how real life espionage continues to play out in the USA.

In 2013, drones and computer programs are all the rage in the surveillance world. There will soon be a big, new data center in Utah to store materials the National Security Agency collects. This comes at a time when criticism of the NSA is increasing after computer technician Edward Snowden leaked government info.

The expansion of digital surveillance reflects Internet advancements. In what now sounds simplistic, in the 1990s Web bugs were a game changer. They track who views websites or e-mails and provide the IP address of an e-mail recipient.

Government spying is nothing new. Briefcase recorders in the 1950s led to transmitters hidden in shoes in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, bugs hidden in tree stumps intercepted communication signals. Devices continued to become more compact. In the 1980s, tiny transmitters with microphones were hidden in pens.

"Spying has gone on throughout history," says Peter Earnest, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and executive director of the International Spy Museum. "The discipline of intelligence has already increased a great deal in the post-Cold War world."

The United States started tracking telegraphic information entering into and exiting the country as far back as 1945. History has shown a steady evolution of the ways governments secretly gather information.